December 15, 2008

Hobbies & Businesses

On the web, there are two kinds of entities -- hobbies and businesses. There are a zillion hobbies and a few businesses. And a lot of hobbies pretending to be businesses.

This blog is a hobby. iTunes is a business.

The difference? Businesses make money.

Facebook is a hugely successful hobby, and a dismal failure as a business. That goes for virtually all social media schemes (more on this later in the week.)

It is very easy to piss away boatloads of money convincing yourself that your web hobby is a business. As a matter if fact, it's the biggest mistake companies and web entrepreneurs make.

In your wildest dreams, can you imagine Steve Jobs spending money on developing a web location where people can upload pictures of their cats, and express their moods, and send cute icons to each other?

Here's a good way to tell if your web idea is a hobby or a business -- would Steve do it?

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